Graduates attend the State Police Academy Graduation Ceremony at the Empire State Plaza in Albany on Oct. 22. Black and Hispanic officers remain underrepresented in most police agencies across the state, despite modest diversity gains since 2021.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Five years after New York ordered local police agencies to develop reform plans aimed in part at improving diversity, Black, Hispanic and female officers remain significantly underrepresented in the vast majority of police departments with more than 40 officers, a Times Union investigation found.
Some departments became more diverse between 2021 and 2024, but those gains generally have not closed the gap between the demographics of police agencies and the communities they serve.
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Increasing diversity in law enforcement was a key issue in 2020 when then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo mandated that law enforcement agencies statewide discuss police practices with their communities and create ways to strengthen public trust. Cuomo’s Executive Order 203 required counties and municipalities to adopt police reform plans by April 2021 or risk losing state funding. Every town, city, village and county in the state with law enforcement agencies submitted plans, many of which laid out plans for attaining more diversity in law enforcement.
In the years since, some departments have done just that, aided by targeted recruitment efforts and national initiatives aimed at bringing more women into policing. But several agencies still have no Black or Hispanic officers, while others have lost officers of color. Police leaders say a shrinking applicant pool has made it harder to build departments that reflect the communities they serve.
Over the same period, public perception of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has shifted amid federal crackdowns and changing cultural mores.
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In 2024, Black officers remained underrepresented in nearly nine out of 10 New York law enforcement agencies with more than 40 officers. Hispanic officers were underrepresented in more than 95%. Every agency in the Times Union’s analysis had proportionally more white officers than the community it serves, and every agency employed fewer women than parity would suggest.
Statewide, the representation of Black, Hispanic and female officers increased slightly from 2021 to 2024, but remained 2.1 percentage points behind the Black population and 33.2 percentage points behind the female population. Meanwhile, the share of Hispanic officers was 1.3 percentage points above the state’s population.
What the data shows
Gains are happening — but not fast enough to erase longstanding representation gaps.
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For the analysis, the Times Union examined sworn officer data collected by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services from 2021 to 2024. This data does not include dispatchers, office staff or other individuals who work alongside police.
To identify meaningful trends, the analysis excluded agencies with fewer than 40 officers in either 2021 or 2024 to limit large percentage swings caused by small staffing changes. Agencies that could not be matched to a single geographic area — such as the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority Police and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police — were also excluded.
The final analysis includes 103 agencies, a subset of the 492 localities across the state that submitted plans.
Population data comes from the American Community Survey five-year estimates for 2021 through 2024.
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The analysis looks at two related but distinct questions: how the racial and gender makeup of police departments changed from 2021 to 2024, and how closely departments’ 2024 demographics matched those of the communities they serve.
Graduating Albany Police Department Officer Jordan Galarza salutes Chief Brendan Cox during his graduation ceremony on June 12 at Broadview Federal Credit Union offices. In Albany, where 26% of residents are Black, the percentage share of Black officers was 12.3% in 2024.
Will Waldron/Times Union
Three of the Capital Region’s largest police departments ranked in the top 10% of the 103 agencies with the largest representation gaps. In the city of Albany, where 26% of residents are Black, the percentage share of Black officers was 12.3% in 2024.
In Troy, the Black population is 16.7%, but the share of Black officers is around 3.2%. Schenectady’s Black population is 19.8%, but its police department’s share of Black officers is about 4.2%.
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In the Hudson Valley, some of the largest disparities were seen in Middletown, where the police department was 21.9 percentage points behind the local Black population and 28.3 percentage points behind the Hispanic population, and the city of Poughkeepsie, which was 18.1 percentage points behind the Hispanic population.
But some agencies, particularly in the Hudson Valley, are making progress on diversity.
From 2021 to 2024, the percentage share of Black officers increased for the city of Newburgh and city of Poughkeepsie police departments, the town of Wallkill and town of Newburgh police departments, and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office — which elected the state’s first Black female sheriff in 2025.
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Meanwhile, the share of Hispanic officers increased 5 to 6 percentage points for Newburgh, Wallkill and New Windsor police departments and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. Even relatively small increases can represent only a few additional officers at a local agency.
In terms of female representation, the city of Newburgh Police Department, whose roster is 20% women, ranked in the top 5% of the agencies in the analysis with the biggest shares of female officers. Newburgh and Schenectady’s city police departments and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office were among the top 10% of agencies with the biggest increase in female representation from 2021 to 2024.
Still, many of these gains are not enough to make up for the representation gaps between the percentage of minority officers and the demographics of the communities they serve.
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For example, the police departments for the city of Poughkeepsie and the town of Wallkill were 24.4 and 12.8 percentage points, respectively, behind the Black population in their communities in 2024. New Windsor Police Department was 17.8 percentage points behind the local Hispanic population.
The examples illustrate the difference between progress and parity: A department can add officers of color or women and still remain substantially less representative of the community it serves.
What’s working
One of the most dramatic shifts in diversity was in the City of Schenectady Police Department, which tripled the number of female officers — from five to 16 — between 2021 and 2024.
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Police Chief Brian Whipple credits the increase to more women pursuing careers in law enforcement and to the department joining the 30×30 Initiative, a national effort launched by the NYU School of Law and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives whose goal is to increase the representation of women in police recruit classes to 30% by 2030.
“Our female officers have been our strongest advocates and recruiters, actively participating in women-focused recruitment events and serving as visible leaders in the community,” Whipple said in an emailed statement. “They also regularly provide ride-alongs for women interested in policing, helping build interest and confidence in pursuing the career.”
Female officers comprised only about 9% of the Albany Police Department — which also took the 30×30 pledge — in 2024. But Police Chief Brendan Cox touted improvement in recent academy classes, where 24% of recruits were women, he told the Times Union in May.
Other agencies have been taking steps to recruit and retain more Hispanic officers.
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Ulster County Sheriff Juan Figueroa is New York’s first Latino sheriff. He is the current president of the New York State Sheriffs’ Association.
Tony Adamis/Special to the Times Union
In Kingston, where Hispanic residents make up 16% of the population, 11% of the city’s police department was Hispanic as of 2024. As an incentive, the department offers bilingual officers a stipend 3% above their base pay, Police Chief Egidio Tinti said. The department also attends Hispanic events and regularly interacts with the community.
“We have a good relationship with the Hispanic community,” Tinti said. “I think that speaks volumes.”
As New York’s first Latino sheriff, Ulster County Sheriff Juan Figueroa believes the agency may have a bit of an “upper hand” with diversity. The sheriff’s office added three Hispanic officers from 2021 to 2024.
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To help connect with minority communities, it also created a recruitment team comprising Black, Latino, female and veteran officers, Figueroa said.
A similar diversity recruitment program was proposed in Columbia County, but never formed, Sheriff Jackie Salvatore said in an emailed statement. Salvatore did not respond to inquiries about why the program was never formed.
But not all departments are taking such a targeted approach. New Windsor Police Chief Daniel Valeri said the department’s recent increase in diversity was the result of a broader community engagement strategy, as opposed to demographically informed recruiting methods.
“We believe that maintaining strong community relationships and encouraging broad participation in the civil service process are the most effective ways to build a police department that reflects and serves the community with professionalism and integrity,” Valeri said.
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The Warwick Police Department employs a similar strategy, Chief John Rader said.
“We’re casting the net for anybody who is interested in law enforcement,” he said. “We’re not really targeting any one group or anything.”
Recruitment challenges
Chiefs across the region consistently pointed to the same obstacles: fewer applicants, declining interest in policing, competition between departments and civil service rules that limit hiring flexibility.
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To combat the staffing crisis, agencies are attending job fairs and community events, working with local colleges to create internship programs, hiring young adults interested in law enforcement as cadets, and establishing “explorers programs” for youth interested in criminal justice careers.
Several municipalities have expanded residency requirements for officers to include adjacent counties, while others have eliminated those requirements altogether (though the officers still need to reside in New York, per state law).
Some agencies, such as the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office, have also made changes to the education requirements to become an officer. The agency previously required applicants to have 60 college credits at the time of their civil service exam. Applicants now earn 30 credits after completing police academy and must earn the remaining 30 credits within five years, the cost of which is covered by the sheriff’s office.
The Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office, which reported no Black officers in 2021 and 2024, is still struggling to find candidates despite hiring a part-time recruiter, Sheriff Kyle Bourgault said.
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“The reality is the overall applicant pool is smaller across the profession, especially among diverse candidates,” Bourgault said in an emailed statement.
The Albany Police Department lost 15 officers from 2021 to 2024, seven of whom were Black. Cox said the shortage of police officer candidates is a national issue.
“The interest in this job has decreased greatly,” Cox said.
When Cox took his police exam in the early ’90s, he was among about 2,000 applicants. Nowadays, the city might get 400 people to take the test.
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“And that’s a good number,” Cox said. “It’s a much greater challenge because the police departments themselves are all competing with each other for that smaller pool.”
Cox said that the push for police reform has had some unintended consequences when it comes to recruiting minorities.
“Post-George Floyd, at a lot of the protests, people turned on our younger Black officers,” he said.
Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll said negative perceptions of law enforcement — which he believes are unfounded — are making it harder to recruit.
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Officer morale is also taking a hit, he said, claiming that bail reform and reduced judicial discretion put officers in “circumstances in which the same individuals are repeatedly charged and subsequently released, resulting in recurring calls for service and the repeated enforcement of similar conduct.”
Figueroa, who also acknowledged the recent negative attitudes toward police, said building trust is key.
“The anti-law-enforcement mentality that’s been around for the last 10 to 15 years, partly due to our own fault, has been an issue in those communities,” he said. “Building that trust has been pretty tough. When those minority communities don’t have trust in law enforcement, you’re not going to get people from that community to work in law enforcement.”